In a few weeks I’m headed to Phoenix, AZ to speak at ICON14. I’m doing a breakout and when I’m done I hope to take some notes from folks like Seth Godin and Simon Sinek on the main stage.
After working with Infusionsoft for the last few months it will be my first time to meet the team that’s been such a huge help to me as I figure out how to be an entrepreneur.
The title of my talk is “the secret rhythm of social media.”
The whole talk would be too long for a blog post, but I will share one of the ideas that I think drives social media.
It’s a simple word really, but I swear it took me a long time to learn.
The word is “empathy.”
In the context of social media, I define empathy as “Understanding what someone needs and acting on it.”
There’s two parts to that idea. The first is “understanding what someone needs.”
Do you know how you do that? You spend time with them.
That’s it. That’s the bottom line. I lost touch with that when I got busy and stopped connecting as much as I used to on Twitter. You can track my ability to understand how to help people with social media based in part on how often I respond to tweets. In the last 7 months I’ve tried to increase that and I feel more connected than I have at other times. There are a lot of ways to respond with social media: twitter, facebook, blog comments, instagram, linkedin, etc. For me, it’s Twitter.
The second part of social media empathy is “acting on it.” If you know what someone needs and don’t act on it, you’re using “media,” not social media. You can take and take online only so long until people figure out you don’t care about them. You’re not here for them. You’re here for you. Eventually that catches up with you.
Empathy isn’t easy.
Good things never are.
They take time and hustle.
Want to serve people with social media?
Understand what they need and act on it.